What They Aren’t Telling You About This Parasite Outbreak

[00:00:00]This package says triple washed, ready to eat. But is it really?

[00:00:05]>> Why is there poop on our vegetables and fruits?

[00:00:08]>> Right now, the CDC is reporting over 1,600 confirmed cases of a parasite outbreak across 34 states. An additional 5,100 cases are awaiting testing to determine if they were acquired in the US. Over 3,700 of these are being reported in Michigan alone. As of right now, officials believe they may have finally, after roughly two months since the current outbreak began, traced the source of at least part of the outbreak to lettuce supplied by Taylor Farms and distributed to Taco Bell restaurants in five states. There are still clusters of the illness around the country that may not be associated with that source. And there's been some strong indication that the outbreak may also be linked to the water supply in certain areas. So, we aren't out of the woods yet.

[00:00:57]>> The CDC has now linked part of the major outbreak to the shredded iceberg lettuce served at Taco Bell in some states, leading to more than 1,644 people sick. 94 people hospitalized across five states, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and West Virginia don't eat lettuce from Taco Bell in those states. The FDA traced those Taco Bell linked cases to a single lettuce grower in Mexico. However, and this is the part that everybody appears to be missing, Taco Bell is unlikely to be the whole story. The CDC's own notice posting says it's also investigating other outbreaks and illnesses of cycllosporasis nationally that are unrelated to this outbreak. So, explicitly, it's not just from Taco Bell. Their lettuce is just the tip of the iceberg. The New York Times reporting backs that up. Dr. Dr. Natasha Bagnasarian, Michigan's chief medical executive, said that not everyone who got sick had eaten at a single common restaurant, and many who got sick reportedly never ate at Taco Bell at all.

[00:01:56]>> And no matter what we learn in the coming days, this outbreak brings up some interesting points that really deserve our attention. So, let's dig into this a little bit deeper. This is a parasite that's carried through human waste and it's getting into your fresh produce. You can't wash it away. It can't be effectively killed with bleach or vinegar or any traditional sanitizers. The one way that it may be getting into our food supply is something the government has been allowing for decades. I went and I did a little bit of research on it to see how it could be transmitted. And come to find out, you're not going to like this.

[00:02:31]It's only transmitted through human feces and not like when it comes out of the body, it's not mature enough to infect somebody else. So, it's got to be human feces that grows in the food or water for however long it takes to grow before it can transmit to another person. So, that being said, um why is there poop on our vegetables and fruits? Um and you can't wash it off.

[00:02:58]This isn't something that if you wash it off, like you can only kill it by cooking it. But like our commercially grown fruits and vegetables, why is there human feces on it? If that's not enough to make you start your own garden, I don't know what is.

[00:03:15]Especially like they're not even being held accountable, right? It's just like, oh, whoopsie. This happened. Sorry about that, guys. I'm going to show you what this parasite actually is, which foods I'm being careful with right now, what actually kills it, what you need to know if you or somebody in your family gets sick, and what we can do to prepare for situations like this in the future, because these things happen over and over again. I also want to talk about the one antibiotic that's considered the preferred treatment because this is a tricky bug. It can take up to two weeks to show up after exposure. And the reporting that we see from the government lags behind by several weeks as well. So even if they do identify the source, we could still potentially see weeks or even months of continually rising cases. And if these case numbers do continue rising, I'm a little concerned about what could happen to the supply of treatment drugs. And I think you should be concerned as well. And then there's the rumor about an mRNA vaccine. I went looking for where that rumor started and I found the name of this exact parasite in a MADNA presentation. There's a little more to the story than I expected. So stay with me because there's a lot of things about this outbreak and even the reported source of the outbreak that aren't being explained very well and I really think that everyone should know about.

[00:04:37]Hey guys, it's Jara with Wicked Prepared. If you are new here, welcome.

[00:04:40]This channel is about being prepared without panicking. We look at things that could affect our food, our families, and our ability to take care of ourselves, and then we talk about what we can actually do about them.

[00:04:52]Today, we're talking about the cycllospora parasite outbreak that's happening right now in July of 2026. I want to go through what this parasite is, what the symptoms look like, how people are getting it, which foods have been connected to it, and what actually kills it. But more importantly, I want to talk about what this means from a preparedness standpoint. What should we have on hand? What should we be doing differently? And how much should we really trust the commercial food supply and the systems that supposedly police it? Before we get into it, I do need to say I'm not a doctor. Nothing in this video is medical advice. I'm just sharing the information that I found because I think people really need to know about it and because I think this outbreak connects directly to the kind of things that we talk about here all the time. So with that out of the way, what exactly is cycllospora? Cycllospora kayotinensis is a microscopic parasite.

[00:05:46]You can't see it, you can't smell it, you can't taste it, but once you swallow it, it can infect your small intestine and make you really, really sick. It causes an intestinal infection that's called cycllosporasis. The main symptom is, and I'm sorry guys, there's really no delicate way to talk about this. The main symptom is frequent watery diarrhea. And when I say frequent, I mean frequent. Some of the official information even describes it as explosive. You can also have stomach cramps, nausea, gas, bloating, loss of appetite, um weight loss, fatigue, headaches, and bodyaches. Some people could also have a low fever. But one of the strangest things about cycllosporasis is that the symptoms can seem to go away and then they come back again. You might start feeling better.

[00:06:32]You think it's finally passed only to get sick all over again. and a few days later. And without treatment, this could drag on for weeks or even months. It also doesn't usually make you sick immediately after you eat the contaminated food. It can take around a week or even longer for symptoms to begin. So, by the time you actually get sick, you're just trying to remember everything that you ate over the past week or two. Was it a salad you had at a restaurant? Was it, you know, cilantro on on your tacos? Was it green onions or something like that? That delay is one of the reasons that this has been so difficult to trace, but also the fact that you can't catch cycllospora from another person the way that you might catch a cold or the flu or a stomach bug. You're not going to get it because you shook somebody's hand or sat next to them.

[00:07:17]>> It started in May and what happened was people started getting sick. They started getting digestive symptoms. It took a long time to trace what the source was, but the source has been found. Approaching 2,000 people got sick and it was traced to lettuce. However, one of the nicest features of lettuce is that it has no intestinal tract. And cycllospora is a protoonean that lives in an intestinal tract. So where did it really come from? Cycllospora is a human pathogen. In places where not good hygiene has been practiced, human beings let their sewage, their fecal material contaminate the waterways that ended up being used as irrigation and that's what caused the contamination. So no, don't blame the cows or the chickens or anybody else. This is a human issue.

[00:08:04]>> The parasite has to go through part of its life cycle outside of the human body before it can become infectious. An infected person passes the parasite in their waste and then it needs to spend roughly 1 to two weeks outside the body in the environment. That could be in water, soil, on equipment or somewhere else. And then once it's matured and become infectious, it can be carried on to fruits and vegetables through contaminated irrigation water, a water that's used during washing or processing, soil splashing or running onto a crop or contaminated hands or boots or tools and harvesting equipment.

[00:08:41]Then when someone eats that contaminated produce raw or undercooked or drinks contaminated water, the parasite enters their body and the whole cycle begins again. So the chain basically looks like this. An infected person, their waste, the environment, your food, and then you. And then that chain is where I think the real story begins. Before we get into the foods, I want you to understand one possible way that this parasite could potentially be getting onto our produce in the first place.

[00:09:11]Because this is not a parasite that comes from chickens or cows or deer or any other wild or domestic animals.

[00:09:19]Cycllospora is spread through the human fecal oral root. Once again, folks, no delicate way. It comes from human waste.

[00:09:27]So, when we're finding it on commercially grown produce, human fecal contamination has entered the food system somewhere. The question is where?

[00:09:35]And one possibility that I think deserves a whole lot more attention is something called bioolids. Bioolids is the nice clean sounding term that's used for treated sewage sludge, human sewage.

[00:09:48]It's been processed and treated, but that's where it comes from. And the EPA allows bioolids to be applied to agricultural land as a fertilizer and a soil conditioner. In 2024 alone, 2.39 million dry metric tons of this material were applied to land in the United States. Millions of tons. Now, I know some people are going to say it's treated, there's rules, there's safety standards, blah blah blah. And that is true. There are standards for how bioolids are supposed to be treated and how they're supposed to be used. And I'm not saying that anybody has proven that bioolids caused this outbreak or anything like that, but it just makes the wheels turn inside your head. It could be sewage contaminated irrigation water. It could be septic system failure. It could be contaminated processing water. It could be an infected worker. It could be improper sanitation somewhere along the supply chain. There's many possible ways that human waste could contaminate food. But when you have a parasite that only comes from humans, that needs to spend time outside the body before it becomes infectious, and you have millions of tons of treated human sewage being spread on agricultural land, I don't think it's an unreasonable conclusion to make that this cycle will not be easily broken. I just wanted to throw that out there. It's definitely not a proven fact, but I absolutely think that we do need to consider that because this parasite didn't just magically appear on a head of lettuce. Human waste entered the food supply somewhere. This is also where case numbers become important. The CDC also says that there can be roughly a 6 week delay between when somebody becomes sick and when that illness shows up on the national case count. So, the numbers that we're seeing today are actually showing us what was happening several weeks ago. It's looking backwards. But what's happening right now, we really don't know yet. There are also probably plenty of people who have or have had cycllosporasis that were never diagnosed. Testing for it might not automatically be included in a normal stool panel. A doctor might have to specifically request it. And even if testing is done, it's not the most reliable. Parasites can easily be missed in traditional testing. So, somebody could be told that they have food poisoning or a stomach bug or just unexplained diarrhea without ever being tested for cycllospora or without a proper diagnosis, even if they are tested. And there's plenty of people also who just don't visit a doctor in the first place. Those people are never going to be added to that official count. And I hate to point out the obvious here, but the feal waste coming from those infected humans is not being removed from the bioolids that will be used as fertilizer the next round of crops. And disease-causing bacteria and parasites slip through filtering and treatments all the time. Now, when you hear that no recall has been issued or even after we hear that it has, don't automatically translate that into everything being safe. Sometimes there's no recall because investigators still don't know exactly which food has caused the outbreak. And by the time they connect all the cases, the food may already have been eaten. The packages are already in the trash. The produce may have passed through several different growers, processors, distributors, grocery stores, restaurants. When something like this happens, it really starts to expose the flaws and the weaknesses in our country's food supply chain. In fact, it's less of a chain and more of a web.

[00:13:14]So for investigators who are trying to trace this back and figure out where the problem began, it's almost impossible.

[00:13:20]We live in a society where a lot of food production is centralized, meaning there's only a handful of corporations that run industrial farms and they produce a majority of our produce. But it's bought and sold and transported and handled so many times that we truly don't know which farm our salad mix came from and how it was handled between here and there. That's why I don't believe we should always wait for the government to give us permission to be cautious. We can look at the available information and we can make our own decisions. That doesn't mean panicking. It just means paying attention. It means choosing homegrown produce over what's available in the grocery store or stopping by a farmers market to support your local farmer who's most likely not spreading human waste for fertilizer and who cares very much about the quality of the produce they they sell and the health of their customers. Which brings up another thing that I want you to ponder. Right now, we're hearing this outbreak might be linked to Taylor Farms. You've probably heard of Taylor Farms, and there's a good reason for this. Taylor Farms is the largest producer of fresh cut salads and vegetables in North America. It is a multi-billion dollar mega corporation. Taylor Farms has bought up and swallowed a lot of smaller companies, including Equinox Growers, Nature's Way Foods, Farm Wise, and Earthbound Farm. They supply bagged salads and produce to Walmart and Costco and many, many major grocery store chains, including packaging the store brand salads as well. And they supply produce to restaurant chains, including, of course, Taco Bell, but also McDonald's, Wendy's, Subway, Chipotle, Burger King, KFC, Olive Garden, Red Lobster. Their reach is massive, and they are one of only really three major corporations that controls the entire market for these kind of foods. And this kind of monopoly creates problems. We talk about this a lot on this channel.

[00:15:11]When a small number of huge corporations controls all the shelf space, they have a lot of power. They have a lot of influence. They can influence the rules that they have to play by, the laws and the processes that should be keeping them in check and us safe. Without competition, there isn't as much need to create higher quality products. The focus becomes on money and power over quality and concern for the health of their customers. And maybe, just maybe, that gives us a little insight into one more reason why it's taken so long to investigate and pin down this outbreak.

[00:15:44]Taylor Farms has been linked to other outbreaks in the past as well, and they are everywhere. Just some food for thought. But back to this current outbreak and what steps we can take.

[00:15:53]Number one, to avoid getting sick, and number two, to be prepared to face it head-on if we do. Because let's remember, even once this outbreak is pinned down and under control, there will be another and another. It's just the world we live in. So, let's talk about the foods that have been connected to previous cycllospora outbreaks or have been coming up in this current investigation. Bagged lettuce, premixed salad kits, raw cilantro, raw basil, green onions, raspberries, snow peas, and raw salad greens served at restaurants. Even before there was any definitive evidence that some of these cases might trace back to Taco Bell, they had voluntarily removed lettuce, pico de gallo, guacamole, and their cilantro onion blend from their restaurants and select markets. But no official recall or determination has been made at the time I'm recording this at least. And there's still a lot of evidence pointing to multiple sources and possible domestic water supply contamination. So, we should still be vigilant. The foods on this list are especially difficult to clean. Lettuce has folds and tightly layered leaves.

[00:16:57]Raspberries have all those little openings and crevices. Fresh herbs have dozens of leaves and stems and uneven surfaces. Green onions have layers and hollow spaces. Even if you wash these foods carefully, it can be extremely difficult to reach every surface. And washing can't effectively remove all traces of cycllospora. Even with bleach or vinegar or baking soda or disinfectants, cycllospora is a tough critter to kill. So, what actually works? Heat. The only dependable way that health officials are telling us to kill cycllospora is to heat the food itself to at least 158° F. And I want to emphasize that that's the food itself, not just the pan, not just the cooking water. The food itself has to reach that temperature. So, what does that actually look like? Cook your greens instead of eating them raw. You can sauté spinach.

[00:17:48]You can wilt arugula. Cook your kale.

[00:17:50]Use basil and cilantro in cooked sauces and soups and other dishes where they're going to be thoroughly heated. Cook your raspberries and your other berries into jam or pie filling or sauces. Add green onions at the beginning of the cooking instead of sprinkling them on at the end like so many people do raw. Choose whole heads of lettuce instead of pre-cut salad kits and remove those outer leaves and discard them. You can feed them to your animals. This parasite is very human specific. It needs a human host, so it can't establish an infection or cause disease in other animals. I don't like to waste. So, we've been feeding those outer leaves to our ducks and our chickens and our guinea pigs. So, you can still wash the inside leaves carefully. And if you do choose to eat things like that raw, at least just understand that cycllospora is not killed by washing. It's not killed by bleach, vinegar, or common disinfectants. I would also be cautious about raw salads at restaurants right now. You just heard just a partial list of the different establishments that are supplied by Taylor Farms. We don't know yet if there's other sources. And of course, there are other outbreaks of foodborne illnesses that are currently happening in addition to this one that's getting all the press right now. When someone else prepares your food, you don't know where the produce came from.

[00:19:02]You don't know how it was washed or how it was treated. You don't know how long it was sitting after it's been chopped.

[00:19:07]You don't know how many other ingredients have been mixed in with it.

[00:19:12]Now, obviously this is nothing new and there are some pretty crazy things that happen in the kitchens of some restaurants. Honestly, I try not to think about it. We rarely eat out, but if I let my mind go there, it would be never. Now, I'm not telling everybody to stop eating every fresh fruit and vegetable. Fresh produce is a very important part of a healthy diet. And I'm not saying that you can never eat another salad. I'm just saying that while this outbreak is active and investigators still haven't figured out and nailed down the source 100%, it makes sense to know which foods are more difficult to clean and adjusted accordingly. Especially if you fall into a high-risisk group like very young children, elderly or immunompromised.

[00:19:52]That's not fear. That's just being informed. If you or somebody in your household develops ongoing watery diarrhea, especially if it gets better and then comes back again, you should contact a healthcare provider. Mention cycllospora by name. Don't just assume that the doctor is going to automatically test for it. You might need to ask whether a specific cycllospora test should be ordered. And now I want to talk about the treatment because I initially thought that there were two antibiotics commonly used for this. So I went and I looked a little bit more closely because I wanted to make sure that I was giving you accurate information. The antibiotic that's considered the treatment of choice for cycllospora is Bactum. Well, that's the brand name anyways. The generic name, if I can even pronounce this right, is trimethopram sulfomthoxazole, I think, which is usually shortened to TMP SMX because it's a mouthful. That's the medication with the strongest evidence for treating cycllospora. But Bactrum isn't safe for everyone because some people have like sulfa allergies or because it can interact with other medications that people might be taking.

[00:20:54]There's also can be concerns during pregnancy and there's also certain medical conditions that could affect whether or not somebody can take this specific drug. Cyprloxicin or cypro has also been mentioned as a possible alternative, but it doesn't appear to work nearly as well against cycllospora.

[00:21:10]There was a small study that suggested it might have some activity in certain patients, but the CDC says that experience in otherwise healthy people suggests that cypro might not be effective. One thing I found pretty interesting was that antibiotics are generally used to treat bacterial infections. But check this out.

[00:21:29]>> I recently received this comment. How does an antibiotic kill a parasite?

[00:21:32]Well, cycllospora is a tiny prozone parasite and you can pick it up from contaminated food or water. But just like bacteria, it makes its own folate from scratch. And folate is essential for building DNA. Bactrum is actually two drugs in one. Sulphthoxol, which blocks step one of folate production, and trimethop which blocks step two. So by having both of those, it stops the parasite from copying its DNA and kills it. Why doesn't it hurt your own cells?

[00:21:57]Well, because humans do not make folate.

[00:21:58]We get it from food. So Bactrum targets a pathway that we do not even have.

[00:22:02]>> Now, here is where my prepper brain starts thinking a few steps ahead. We have an outbreak where the CDC numbers are weeks behind. They're definitely weeks behind. We likely have people who are sick and have not been properly diagnosed. And we have one antibiotic that's considered the preferred treatment. So, what happens if testing starts catching up? What happens if thousands more cases are confirmed? What happens if doctors suddenly start writing a whole lot more prescriptions for the same medication? I haven't found anything saying that Bactrum is currently in an official nationwide shortage. But every shortage starts somewhere. There's always a possibility.

[00:22:41]Sometimes demand spikes unexpectedly like this. Sometimes a manufacturer has a problem. Sometimes a distributor can't keep up. And we've seen medication shortages happen over and over again.

[00:22:53]Antibiotics, children's medicines, pain relievers, prescription drugs, even normal over-the-counter medications. So, I do think it's possible that we could see local or temporary shortages if the number of cycllospora cases continues rising. And yes, maybe this would be a more appropriate time to stock up on toilet paper than the last time everybody did it. But honestly, my main concern is access to the antibiotic.

[00:23:18]Because the worst time to start figuring out how you're going to get a prescription filled is when somebody in your family is already sick, exhausted, and dehydrated. And if you're a family of one, you're a single person, and you get sick, that can be even worse. I have seen stories from plenty of people whose symptoms, shall we say, were so frequent, unpredictable, and explosive that they literally couldn't make it to the doctor or to a hospital or to a pharmacy. They were glued to their toilet as you could imagine. And this is the perfect example of one of many reasons why it's really good to have emergency antibiotic kits on hand. This is a huge game changer for preparedness.

[00:23:56]I honestly think it's one of the most important preps after food and water.

[00:23:59]I've talked about Jace Medical on the channel before because they provide a legitimate legal way to obtain certain emergency prescription medication before you're in the middle of a crisis. The medications are prescribed to you on an emergency use basis as a backup so you're covered when you can't get to help or help can't get to you or help simply isn't available or accessible at all. You have it on hand as part of your emergency supplies. And July is a perfect time to add this to your preps because they actually have some pretty major sales going on this month. Their JGO kit, which actually includes generic Bumrum, is on sale this month actually.

[00:24:37]And their regular Jayce case is also on sale for the lowest price that they've ever offered it before. And that includes Cypro along with several other antibiotics. And they've also added that generic Bactrum as an add-on option for the Jace case in light of this outbreak that's going on. They've got deals going on on their parasite protocol.

[00:24:55]Basically, lots and lots of good deals going on this month. And a lot of them directly apply to this outbreak. And this doesn't mean like you get diarrhea and you instantly start popping antibiotics. There are a lot of scenarios and a lot of different ways that things could unfold and Jace does offer support and they offer information and like educational things that come with all of their kits to make sure that antibiotic use stays appropriate and responsible. In a true SHTF scenario, we may be on our own, but other situations could include like speaking to your doctor remotely and then just knowing that you have your medication on hand if you can't get out to the pharmacy or theiesy's out of it or whatever the case may be. From my own standpoint, I feel a whole lot better knowing that I have medications, like real human medications legally prescribed, sitting on my shelf at home. If there's a shortage, if there's a pharmacy disruption, if there's a storm, a transportation issue, or some other kind of problem or emergency, I'm not stuck with nothing.

[00:25:51]I've got options. And that is the entire point of preparedness. I'm going to put my Jace link down in the description because it should give you an extra $10 off. I am not sure if that works with those sales because they're such good sales, but if you pick up anything that's not on sale, it should give you the $10. So, anyways, it's worth trying just just to be sure. I'm not sure. It may it may put the $10 off on top of all those other discounts. I'll put my Jace link down in the description. And I also have a video where I dig in a little bit deeper into how it all works. And I'm going to link that down there as well in case you want more information about it.

[00:26:22]look into the different kits, read what's included, but especially with an outbreak like this, it's just a good reminder of why this option even exists and why it's so good to have. There's one more part of this that I don't think gets talked about enough that's really important for preparedness, and that's dehydration. The diarrhea that's caused by the cycllospora can be very severe, and sometimes dehydration becomes a more immediate problem than the parasite itself. And that's especially dangerous for like older adults, very young children, pregnant women, and anybody with an underlying health condition.

[00:26:55]This is why your emergency supplies should include more than just bottled water. You should have electrolytes, oral rehydration salts, something that can replace like sodium, potassium, and all of those other things that the body is losing. Plain water is important, but when somebody has severe diarrhea or vomiting, water alone cannot replace everything that they're losing. This is such a simple prep, but I think a lot of people overlook it. And here's something that you might not know that's important when it comes to preparedness. I know that sugar-free electrolytes are a big thing right now. That's all the rage.

[00:27:30]But here's the thing. We have something called a sodium glucose linked transporter in our gut that moves glucose and sodium together into our bloodstream and then water follows. So basically glucose enhances sodium and water absorption in the intestines. It's the same reason why medical oral rehydration solution that's used all over the globe to save countless lives from dehydration includes both sodium and glucose. It's a relatively small amount. It's nothing like the massive doses of sugar that you're going to get in something like Gatorade, for example, but it's enough to serve its purpose. If you're just sipping electrolytes casually, like so many people do every day, this probably isn't crucial. But when it comes to combating dangerous dehydration, that is another thing altogether. That's why we buy highquality electrolytes that are designed to be functional more than they are trendy. When it comes to survival situations, it really matters. So keep that in mind when you're building your medical preps. One more thing to consider besides emergency antibiotics, um, stored emergency water, and electrolytes is water filtration.

[00:28:34]Everyone should have a good water filter or several on hand for emergencies. But just like we should use and rotate our emergency food, what about our water filter? There's a lot of people who actually use a highquality gravity water filter like a Burky or an Alexapure on a daily basis. And that might not be such a bad idea. If cycllosphora does infect our water supply, we wouldn't know it until it's too late. And this wouldn't be the first time something like this has happened. In 1993, cryptosperidium infected the public water supply in Milwaukee and it sickened over 400,000 people and actually led to at least 69 deaths. Then in 2021, a cyber attacker was able to access a water system in Florida and increase the lie levels in the water to very dangerous amounts.

[00:29:18]Unfortunately, this attack was caught and thwarted before it could harm anyone. But it's just one more good reminder that our entire water system is vulnerable to a lot of dangers, both natural and man-made. And often it's too late when we finally get the alert.

[00:29:33]Breaking out that water filter and using it regularly is one more level of protection. And it also means that in a disaster, you're already going to be comfortable with using your water filter rather than trying to figure it out at the worst possible time. Now, let's talk about that mRNA vaccine rumor that I mentioned earlier. I had seen people saying that an mRNA vaccine was being developed specifically for cycllopppora.

[00:29:57]So I went looking for where that claim came from and it isn't entirely a conspiracy theory. There is a real document behind at least part of it. In a madna presentation from 2022, cycllospora kaotinensis appeared on a list connected to madna's mRNA access program for neglected and emerging infectious diseases. Cycllospora was listed as a potential future program.

[00:30:20]That document is real. And Cycllospora was definitely named, but it was listed as a potential future program, not as an active vaccine, not a vaccine in clinical trials, not a vaccine that's been approved, and not something that's about to be released because of this outbreak. As far as I can tell, as of July 2026, I haven't found cycllospora listed in Madna's active clinical pipeline. The CDC also says there is currently no vaccine available for cycllospora. So I don't think it's accurate to say that MADNA currently has a cycllopppora vaccine ready to go. But it really was identified by Madna as something that could potentially be targeted through its mRNA program in the future. I wanted to look into it instead of immediately either repeating the rumor or just dismissing it. I think we all have to be careful about that. But it is an interesting connection, isn't it? So, let's bring this down to a practical list. What can you actually do right now? First, reduce or temporarily avoid the higher risk raw produce. And that includes bagged salads, premixed salad kits, um raw cilantro, raw basil, green onions, raspberries, and snow peas. I would also be careful with restaurant salads and other raw produce that's prepared outside of your home.

[00:31:33]Choose whole heads of lettuce instead of the pre-cut bags and remove those outer leaves. Throw them away. Second, cook more of your greens and fresh herbs.

[00:31:42]Remember that number, 158 degrees Fahrenheit. Sauté them. Cook them into sauces. Add herbs and green onions early enough so that they actually heat all the way through. Don't assume that washing alone makes everything safe.

[00:31:54]Third, know the symptoms. Frequent watery and or explosive diarrhea, cramping, fatigue, headaches, symptoms that might improve and then come back again. If that happens, contact a doctor and specifically mention cycllospora.

[00:32:08]Ask whether you need a specific test for it. Fourth, think about medication access before you need it. Take advantage of what's available to you. We have amazing things available these days. Have a plan. Fifth, stock supplies for hydration, electrolytes or oral rehydration solution and emergency drinking water itself. Whatever makes sense for your household. Don't wait until somebody is already severely dehydrated. And sixth, think about your food supply over the long term. Look at what you have in your pantry. Do you have canned vegetables, shelf stable produce, freeze-dried vegetables?

[00:32:41]Ingredients that allow you to make meals without relying on raw salad greens?

[00:32:46]Could you grow some of the food that you use most often? Even just sprouts and micro greens, is really easy and a great way to get those fresh greens in a way that you know is safe because they've been in your control all the time. Even just growing some lettuce, herbs, green onions, and berries could give you a lot more control over some of the foods that are connected to previous outbreaks. And y'all thought raising your own vegetables was a waste of money. All I'm saying is don't depend on the grocery store cuz you never know when it's going to be full of crap.

[00:33:16]>> You guys, this is why we prepare. Not because we think the world is ending every 5 minutes. Not because we need to be terrified of everything we eat. We prepare because problems happen. Food gets contaminated. Medications become difficult to find. Sometimes government investigations take time. Supply chains fail. And when that happens, I don't want to be standing there with no idea what to do. I want information. I want supplies. I want options. And I want that for you and your family as well. If this video was helpful or if you learned something new, hit that like button. It really does help. Subscribe if you haven't already. I put out a new video every Sunday and as often as I can, I put them out on Thursday as well. And I really want to hear from you in the comments. Have you changed anything that you're buying or anything that you're eating because of this current outbreak?

[00:34:05]Do you currently have cycllosporasis or know somebody who does or who has had it? And has this made you think any differently about having emergency medications available. Tell me what you think and let me know what state you're watching from. I read every comment, every single one. If you watched all the way to the end of this video, leave me a salad emoji down in the comments. And there's going to be another video of mine right up here that I just bet you're going to enjoy. I'm Jerara with Wicked Prepared. Survive today, thrive tomorrow. We'll see you next time.